‘Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ was mired in scandal. ‘Orange County’ is hoping for a fresh start

When “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Orange County” premieres Thursday as the first spinoff of the popular but mired flagship series, it faces a test tougher than learning a viral TikTok dance: figuring out if the reality TV property that became an unexpected hit can successfully franchise beyond its Utah backdrop — and baggage.

Born from a confession that took off online by influencer Taylor Frankie Paul about “soft swinging” — an arrangement she and her then-husband had with other couples that involved group drinking and intimacy short of intercourse — “Mormon Wives” turned intrigue about a salacious suburban scandal into a reality TV hit. Suddenly the time-honored reality TV format built on documenting the personal lives and social dynamics of women, pioneered by Bravo’s “The Real Housewives” franchise, underwent a modern makeover in Hulu’s series by casting its lens on a group of Utah-based TikTok influencers known as #MomTok.

It premiered in September 2024 — showcasing a messy cocktail of flexuous faith, fracturing friendships and fascinating marriage dynamics — and was such a hit that four more seasons have been pumped out in the time since. Now the original show is facing cast departures and internal fallout driven by outside career moves, deteriorating friendships and serious domestic abuse allegations involving Paul, which led to filming disruptions and renewed scrutiny over reality TV casting standards. The Times requested to speak with executive producers of the series — Jeff Jenkins and Lisa Filipelli — for this article but were told they were not available .

Can “Orange County” and the group of nine women it features brighten its outlook?

“I haven’t watched all of it; I’ve watched snippets of it,” says Jen Affleck, a main cast member of the original series who anchors the spinoff. “It was hard watching it back. It was the first time that I watched back a season where I actually felt like ‘this is me’ … I was really just looking for community. This year has been the hardest year of my life, and you’ll see watching the season why having a group of supportive women around you is so important.”

The lore behind how the group of women was cobbled together is explained by Affleck in the season‘s opening moments. She and fellow “Mormon Wives” star Whitney Leavitt were in California as contestants on Season 34 of “Dancing With the Stars,” and they each became friends with different women who had ties to the Mormon church. Post-”DWTS,” Leavitt went on to pursue opportunities on Broadway, while Affleck decided to move to Orange County and, as she tells it, combine the two friend groups for this new series. Finding “community” is a recurring sentiment expressed by the women throughout the season.

The group is a mix of active Latter-day Saints, former or non-practicing members, and non-Mormons with nominal ties — each with varying degrees of social media presence: McCall DaPron is an active member of the LDS church — and staunch defender of the church’s traditional practices; she’s also the sister of original “Mormon Wives” cast member Mayci Neeley; Jordan McClanahan, who converted after reconnecting with her high school sweetheart (now husband) and grew close to the faith while attending addiction recovery programs through the church; Madison Bontempo, an active churchgoer who made her name as a family YouTuber; Salomé Andrea, a content creator with more than 1.6 million TikTok followers who was raised in the church but is currently inactive; Aspyn Ovard, a prominent lifestyle, beauty and fashion YouTuber and influencer who was baptized in the church but does not identify as Mormon now; Ashleigh Pease, an Austrialian-born active member of the church and fitness instructor; Avery Woods, a former pediatric ICU nurse turned full-time content creator and podcaster who has never been a member of the church; and Bobbi Althoff, a longtime social media creator and popular podcaster who hosts “The Really Good Podcast” and is not Mormon, but whose brother is and she occasionally attended LDS church services growing up.

On a recent afternoon, the cast members are sitting alongside each other (minus Andrea, who was absent that day) inside a West Hollywood hotel room — the site of their press junket — a week before the show‘s premiere. And it’s hitting them that they’re about to face a new level of attention.

“Especially after seeing the billboard,” McClanahan says. “We were driving in our party bus or whatever you want to call it.”

Althoff interjects: “I saw one by my daughter’s preschool.”

“We saw two different ones,” McClanahan says. “We got out the second time when we saw it and tried to take photos.”

Many in the group, as high-profile online personalities, already know what it’s like to be perceived by the public. When the spinoff was announced, the opinionated takes came swiftly — either because the casting skews away from the premise in the title, or the fact that not all the women actually live in Orange County. But in reality TV, buzz is buzz.

“There’s so many people that have commented that are like, ‘Oh, I’ll never watch this,’ ” Pease says. “And then they see the trailer and they’re like, ‘Actually, maybe I will.’ ”

There’s no going back now, whatever the response.

The spinoff doesn’t have cameos of massive Swig cups with dirty soda concoctions (Diet Coke with fresh lime is the vibe here) or interstitials of group TikToks (yet). Fans who lamented the amount of screen time the husbands (and the like) commanded in “Mormon Wives” will see only nominal signs of that with their shore-side counterparts; and there’s is a Chase McWhorter jump scare because — spoiler alert — he has a history with one of women. But much like its predecessor, there’s plenty of petty clashes and misunderstandings. The merging of the two friend groups, early on, triggers clique dynamics that splits the cast into opposing camps — the so-called “Molly Mormons” and the non-Mormons or loosely affiliated influencers — and drives much of the season’s drama.

“Some people were religious and some people weren’t,” DaPron says.”It was like natural formation. It was who we felt comfortable around because a lot of the Mormon girls, minus Madison, weren’t influencers. It was just a different world for us.”

“Everyone was cast for a reason,” Woods says. “That’s what makes it so different from the original show … we have such a different storyline where we challenge each other and we learn more about each other and our beliefs, our moral values.”

They also insist they aren’t trying to be #MomTok 2.0. There will be no emergency meetings or votes to determine who is in or out of the group or jockeying over who runs the pack. They’ve even sworn off making digital digs at each other — though, only time will tell how long that lasts.

“We made it clear early on that we didn’t think a leader was necessary in a friend group at our age,” Woods says. “We also have had open discussions about online hate and coming at each other online, which we feel is unnecessary.”

“I also feel like that’s a normal friend group,” Affleck chimes in. “OG MomTok was not a normal friend group.”

“Yeah, I would never go online about my friends in real life,” Althoff adds. “So, I’m not gonna like do that with any of them. That was a decision we all talked about too. We all obviously spend a lot of time together. We have problems sometimes. We can all handle that offline without destroying each other online.”

Like the original series, the spinoff contrasts its superficial drama and feuds by exploring the deeply personal struggles and lifestyle choices its cast is navigating. A pregnant Affleck shares that her marriage is at its breaking point and she wants to move forward with a divorce from her husband, Zac — a situation and life decision she’s mulled before and documented on the original series. (She filed for divorce last week, the day of the show’s premiere event.) Ovard, meanwhile, is divorced and in a polyamorous relationship with a married couple, while also managing the emotional load of having a terminally ill child. Later in the season, a cast member’s past on OnlyFans is revealed by another, setting in motion the season’s first emotional walk-off.

“You kind of have no choice when that’s your real life and you sign up to do something like this,” Ovard says. “What choice do we have? We’re going through what we’re going through, and it just is life. This is my first time sharing my story. I am newer to Orange County and didn’t have community here, and it’s been really great and life changing to form this friend group and just have each other and be able to lean on each other.”

Affleck says, for now, she’s staying offline, dodging all chatter — supportive or not — about the end of her marriage.

“I don’t want people rallying around me,” Affleck says. “Zac is the father of my kids, and I will have to co-parent with him for the rest of my life. I just try to stay offline because I know that can mess with our heads [because] there’s also the other side of people saying like, ‘Oh, she chose fame over her marriage.’ I know that I gave everything to my marriage.”

Avery Woods, left, Salome Andrea, McCall DaPron and Bobbi Althoff in a scene from a cast trip in the first season of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Orange County.”

(Ashley Rose / Disney)

For the women who already live some of their lives online, joining a reality show can seem redundant and risky, inviting fresh vitriol that could add more emotional stress or threaten their carefully built brands. But Woods sees it as “the next best thing in my career,” to show more of who she is to her online fanbase. Still, their decision to join the show came before the events that cast a shadow on the franchise. Cameras began rolling in April, just weeks after domestic violence allegations involving Paul and her on-again, off-again boyfriend Dakota Mortensen surfaced.

“I kind of separated the two a little bit,” Bontempo says. “I just saw Taylor as an individual, as a [woman] that just needed help and going through a hard time.”

Reality TV fans might notice the spinoff also arrives at a broader inflection point for a genre built on the lives of complicated women. “The Real Housewives of Orange County” — the blueprint for a television empire that’s kept viewers rapt with everything from chaotic sprinter van excursions and friendship fallouts to messy divorces and fraud investigations — celebrated its 20th anniversary this year along with a 20th season of the series. Yet that milestone, as some fans have expressed, acutely exposed the show’s fatigue. And it’s not the only one. Bravo has rebooted the show in some cities across its lineup to mixed results. The expansion of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” into Orange County will test whether the region can deliver another hit, and whether the TikTok generation’s brand of voyeuristic soap can carry the torch.

While the bigger existential reality TV crisis can be debated by philosophers, the cast members are reflecting on a much simpler question: What surprised them most about the experience?

“How exhausting it would be,” Woods says. “It was emotionally and mentally draining.”

“I was going to say something positive — like the friendships,” adds Althoff. “Obviously going into it, it is a job. We’re all doing it to get paid at the end of the day. I didn’t expect to find so much community here and friendship. I didn’t expect to ever like some of these people. Now I really enjoy McCall and Jordan. Me and McCall … went on a trip together after the show, and it wasn’t filmed, and we sat together for 10 hours and got to know each other. By the end of it, I text someone and was like, ‘I think I like McCall now.’ ”

“If you see the show, that will blow your mind,” DaPron says.

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